


The Universe Is Rarely So Lazy

by fancyday, tereomaori



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Episode: s01e01 A Study in Pink, First Meetings, Friendship, Gen, Pre-Episode: s01e01 A Study in Pink, St Bartholomew's Hospital
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-20
Updated: 2017-04-20
Packaged: 2018-10-21 07:50:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10680915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fancyday/pseuds/fancyday, https://archiveofourown.org/users/tereomaori/pseuds/tereomaori
Summary: Two short scenes. Sherlock and John catch a glimpse of each other the day John leaves for Afghanistan and meet again two years later inA Study in Pink.





	1. Coincidence

**Author's Note:**

> Neither of us are native speakers, so please feel free to point out any errors:)  
> Title taken from _The Sign of Three_ , dialogue taken from _A Study in Pink_.

Sherlock stood leaning on the window sill, gazing down at Montague Street. The sun had only just risen, but he simply hadn’t been able to sleep tonight.

He watched people walking by on their way to work, practicing his skills of observation and deduction on them as they passed. Some of them he had seen before, and those were only interesting if there was a considerable change in their lives visible for him.

He selected a young man from the crowd and immediately started looking for clues. Now anyone else would first have noticed that the man had dark blond hair or that he was rather shorter than the average height. But Sherlock didn’t _notice_ these things, the obvious things, his brain had memorized them before he was even aware his eyes had taken them in.

What Sherlock noticed first was that this man was a soldier, he could easily have deduced it from his haircut and the way he moved even if it hadn’t been for the uniform he was wearing. But there was something else about him, something about his face maybe. Of course there were all those young men who joined the army simply because they didn’t know what else to do with their lives or because they thought they might look good in a soldier’s uniform and couldn’t imagine what war was like in the slightest.

He sighed at the thought of someone unable to find any more interesting occupation than crawling over battle fields to have their brains blown out by a bullet any moment. But even Sherlock had to admit this one didn’t look as stupid as all that. Then he found what he had been looking for; obvious, really: first aid kit among several other pieces of luggage. Army doctor, then. 

And before he had even begun to wonder where he might be going, he remembered Mycroft mentioning British soldiers starting off for Afghanistan from London.

So an army doctor bound for Afghanistan. Not likely to pass under this window more often any time soon. 

All these thoughts had passed through his mind in a few seconds, and when the soldier had turned a corner Sherlock’s eyes started darting over the crowd again, looking for some other person he hadn’t seen before, the soldier, as he assumed, having passed out of his sight forever, the way most people did, the way people were supposed to do in the vast maze that was London because the probability of meeting them again was so ridiculously small. 

֍ ֍ ֍

"Afghanistan or Iraq?" Sherlock Holmes asked, for the first time turning his head to look the stranger in the eye.

"Sorry?"

"Afghanistan or Iraq, which one was it?"

And then the answer struck him like lightning: He already knew, and suddenly he felt as if someone had turned back time and he were standing by the window in Montague Street again, watching a soldier disappear from view on his way to war.

He had seen him only once, for a few seconds, two years ago. But the faces of those he had once applied his methods to, along with all the information he acquired about them, were stored in Sherlock’s memory for years; he could visualize them whenever he needed to, and he never failed to recognize them.

This was the young army doctor who had strode down Montague Street so briskly one cold, sunny morning two years ago, returned from Afghanistan with a tan, a limp and a dead, empty look in his dark blue eyes. But now he had a name.

"Afghanistan," Sherlock murmured so quietly neither Mike Stamford nor John Watson could hear it.

"Afghanistan, so… How did you know?"  
Sherlock, for reasons that were not even clear to himself, chose to ignore the question, muttering a word of thanks as he took the mobile phone John held out to him because there was no signal on his own.

Two years ago, Sherlock would have laughed at anyone suggesting he share rooms with a stranger. Now, he had no choice. In fact, he probably had to be grateful for having found someone willing to move in with him – for having found a flatmate. John Watson. Whatever Mycroft might say, this encounter was certainly a most remarkable coincidence.


	2. By Chance

John was walking down Montague Street, completely lost in thought.

He had spent years learning how to be a soldier and how to be a doctor. Now he was about to be both, in practice. John couldn’t tell which of the two scared him more.

As he passed the British Museum, his thoughts drifted to those he was leaving behind: a few friends that were really no more than acquaintances, and Harry. John wasn’t sure if leaving Harry felt like a betrayal or sad or like a relief or like a mixture of it all and, if it was indeed relief he felt, if that was wrong.

And where was he going? Afghanistan – a few weeks ago that had been a country like any other he’d never been to. Now it meant his future. He knew most people couldn’t understand why he had joined the army after graduating instead of working at a hospital or in a practice. The truth was that John couldn’t really understand it himself. He only knew that he certainly wasn’t going to spend his life prescribing pills to old ladies who had a cold. 

A noise from above made him look up. A window on the second floor of one of the houses had been opened, and a young man was looking down at the street. John thought it looked as though he were scanning the crowd for familiar faces, though he was doing it too rapidly for the chance of actually recognising anyone to be great.

The man had dark curls and was very lean, judging by his cheekbones and his arms, which were propped layzily on the windowsill. John turned away and moved on, thinking that this was one of the last faces he would see, really see, before he left England, and not one he was likely ever to see again. 

The young man‘s eyes continued to dart over the crowd, but John had turned away. A second later they sought out John, but he never knew. 

֎֎֎

"Afghanistan or Iraq?" 

The brisk question brought a flood of memories to John – it was the very question he had asked when he had been called into his superior’s office to discuss where he would have to go. 

But the man asking the question now, that face, they brought back another memory, the memory of a young army doctor walking down Montague street on a cold clear morning and of a strange face at a window, taking in the people in the crowd on the street. 

"Afghanistan." Now the word meant his past, his pain, his poison. In Montague Street it had been the future, and the face at the window had, in John’s mind, been forever connected to the beginning of a new life.

And by some incredible chance, that was just what it was now. "Got my eye on a nice little flat in central London. Together we ought to be able to afford it." With these words, the face at the window provided another beginning.

In a whirl of dark fabric, the young man was at the door. "The name’s Sherlock Holmes," said he, finally giving a name to a memory treasured for years, ever since that cold clear morning in Montague Street.


End file.
